cameroncrazy1984:skullkrusher: are you serious? We don't need to look at what happened under Bush to know that the expectations for this month was 125K new jobs and this number is well short of the mark and therefore rather disappointing. You honestly don't understand this?

No, I understand completely and that it'll probably be revised upward next month like the last few have. I'm not disappointed that our economy is adding jobs, if that's what you're asking. That's like being disappointed you're getting an ice cream cone when you were promised a slightly larger ice cream cone.

No, it's not, unfortunately. It's like getting a 1300 calorie diet when you need 2000. That number isn't even enough to keep pace with population growth. We need about 125,000 or more new jobs just to keep pace with population growth. I was really hoping this would be a good report, but the fact is it's just absolutely lousy and it couldn't come at a worse time for Obama.

MattStafford:I don't understand how you can't think this all the way through.

Government hires people to dig ditches. People digging ditches buy washing machines. Washing machine company expands. Government lays off ditch diggers, expects them to get a job at the washing machine factory. Can't you see the problem? These places are only expanding due to the increased demand from the ditch diggers. Once the ditch diggers are laid off, the demand falls off, and those places contract.

Again, most employment is in local services:

Ditch diggers and washing machine builders eat out more.Restaurants open and expand, hiring.Strip-mall owners buy new cars.Restaurant employees and owners buy some ditches and washing machines.Washing machine factory middle managers hire kids to mow their lawns. Kids take their girlfriends out for nice meals.

Of course SOME demand will fall off when the ditch-digging program winds down. And some is self-sustaining.

skullkrusher:CPennypacker: Some people don't realize that adisappointing jobs report doesnt necessarily mean Romney could do better (or good at all)

also, some people don't realize that honestly looking at a jobs report and saying "this is disappointing" is not a criticism of Obama nor an endorsement of Romney. It is an objective analysis of results vs expectations.

yes, that's what it means. Like when a company is projected to earn $.10 per share on revenues of $200mm but reports $.06 EPS on revenues of $150mm that is very commonly referred to as a "disappointing" earnings report. I suppose you would argue that the fact that they earned any money at all makes it not disappointing - this is, of course, ridiculous.

Gaseous Anomaly:Of course SOME demand will fall off when the ditch-digging program winds down. And some is self-sustaining.

What I don't get is how this is different from private sector jobs. If I hire someone to build a house for me, is that not a real job because it eventually ends? I'm not paying those contractors in perpetuity or anything.

Some retired, some went back to school. And given how many people will be retiring as the baby boomer hit retirement age, it's going to take finding a slightly different number to really measure things. There are roughly 10,000 people turning 65 each day now. And 64, 63, 62, 61 and 60. That's a metric assload of people who are reaching retirement and many will indeed be retiring. Now how many retired last month? Can't find the number, but it's not going to be an insignificant number.

impaler:adiabat: Good news is the U-6 ( Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force - the REAL number.) is 14.7%From 2002-2008 the worst it ever got was 13.5%.

The "real" number? All countries use U3 as the standard metric.

U6 is pretty much just U3 multiplied by 1.74. They say the same thing, just have a different scale. Why would you call the larger scale "real" when people use the smaller one?

[research.stlouisfed.org image 630x378]

So, basically what you;re saying is that the economy started to turn around a few months after Obama was inaugurated and he had a chance to put some of his policies in place. That number started dropping around july/august 2009. You just disproved your own point.

Debeo Summa Credo:They all at based on economic assumptions and expectations of how the economy would react if the GOP had acted otherwise. A right wing blogger could make a similar list citing how Obama has stood in the way of job growth by passing health care reform, signing Dodd frank, or not agreeing to extend all tax cuts while the economy is still soft. Those would all rest on assumptions as well.

Well, except for the fact that independent organizations have scored those things and we have actual numbers that bear that assumption out to be false. It's like you don't understand that we can test these things.

Headso:skullkrusher: CPennypacker: Some people don't realize that adisappointing jobs report doesnt necessarily mean Romney could do better (or good at all)

also, some people don't realize that honestly looking at a jobs report and saying "this is disappointing" is not a criticism of Obama nor an endorsement of Romney. It is an objective analysis of results vs expectations.

Those people must not realize we are 2 months from an election.

leave the spin to those running for office. You should be able to pull off objective analysis this close to an election.

MattStafford:To use a real world example, think of our military industrial complex. We are employing millions of people directly through defense contracts. Think of all the engineers at Boeing/Lockheed, all of the factory workers building the planes/bombs/whatever, all of the paper pushers at the DoD, all of the actual soldiers. People have been trained for decades to do jobs that are only supported by government debt. These factories build things only demanded by government debt. If the government ever slowed down defense spending, these people are trained for jobs that don't exist in the private economy. These factories are tooled to build things that aren't demanded by the private economy.

Sure, there would be some overlap, but that is basically what I mean by distorted. We are training our people and tooling our factories to do things that won't be around forever.

I don't think that's a good example of distortion, because we do need a military after all, and national defense is a textbook public good. Now if air forces become obsolete, peace breaks out, or something, those folks will be out of luck, but that sort of thing happens all the time in the private sector.

(We have politically-driven inefficiencies in the military-industrial complex, e.g. Congress keeping around weapons that the Pentagon doesn't want because they're built in key districts, but that's a different problem).

Cletus C.:AirForceVet: I'm not particularly worried about unemployment as the sole measure of the Obama Administration.

Wise strategy if you're an Obama supporter.

Obama is working hard, dude, and the unemployment numbers would be lower if companies weren't on record as being specifically hostile to Obama's administration. I am someone who will not forget that certain companies are sitting on assloads of cash right now, and want unrealistic promises of profit which they then promise they'll translate into opening up jobs once they get what they want from congress .............. jobs which will open up overseas, but they'll still be jobs opened up. That was another point in Biden's speech last night, that utter chutzpah, which should be getting more play.

Obama has many things he's accomplished, and it's not just wise, it's plain common sense to not just see the fall of unemployment, no matter how small, as something Obama can be proud of.

The sarcastic 'wise' type comments need to be reserved for the obstructionists and those who follow them. Are you one of them?

Median household income is down $4,000 since Obama took office. We have added + Six Trillion dollars to the debt, so the debt burden is now $132,000 for each and every American. And the solution that Obama promised would keep unemployment below 8% was spend money. That was achieved how? In the greatest swindle of our history. Borrowing on the backs of our childrend and grandchildren. Trillions of dollars in stimulus. Don't even get me started on the shell game they are playing with Obamacare and robbing Medicare and relying on unicorn farts and leprechauns to fund its future.

Oh, but we got a 2% decrease in our payroll taxes. From where? Social Security. So now we are funding that trust less, fewer people are paying into it, and I as a 30 something am supposed to feel good about that? I am already resigned to there being no Social Security or Medicare when I get to be in my 70s... But, the asininity and contortions that the politicians are going through to buy votes is mind boggling. Instead of promoting real solutions, and having an honest conversation with the American people about the future and the sacrifices we will all have to make to pass along to our children something better than we have, we are instead passing along the promise of Greece, Spain, and the rest of the Euro-zone. We are passing along the promise stagflation and an America in decline. Forgive me for not partaking in the Kool-Aid drinking.

Remember Obama promised that premiums wouldn't rise? Well, guess what they are rising, at a faster rate and the deductibles and co-pays are increasing as well. So, the burden is ever increasing on the American worker. Those who are lucky enough to remain employed are earning less and spending less all the while seeing the buying power of their dollar diminish at a faster and faster rate.

I know I know, it's Bush's fault and Obama inherited a mess. He also inherited Bush's congress (Pelosi and Reid) and they promptly sold America out to China, thanks Timmy Geithner.

Did Bush in 2004 go, oh woe is me, I inherited a recession from Bill Clinton (.COM bust) and a war on Terror from Bill Clinton (1993 WTC, Embassy Bombings, USS Cole, etc..) Or Iraq from Bill Clinton (operation Desert Fox and the No Fly zones). No, I think Bush ran on his record. All Obama does is say, I prevented the US from going into a Depression. Really, he can prove that? He can prove he prevented something. If so this statement is equally as true, he prevented the US from having an unprecedented Economic Boom!!!

There's the problem, projections do not necessarily predict future numbers very well. Sure the prediction may look solid, but things may happen that make it utterly impossible for the predicted outcome to result.

skullkrusher:I suppose you would argue that the fact that they earned any money at all makes it not disappointing - this is, of course, ridiculous.

I disagree that this is a ridiculous argument. I think that earning any profit at all is a good thing. I think that we generally have unrealistic expectations about the state of the world, and I think that given the global economy is currently in a state where it is finding its equilibrium (as the fella that wrote Snow Crash said "The invisible hand of the free market smooths everything out to the level a pakistani brick layer would call prosperity) any growth at all is a good thing. But I have lowered expectations. 30 years of watching Pax Americana collapse like a flan in a cupboard will do that.

MattStafford:ddam: Just to play along with your example, while those workers get that money from the government they start spending it too thus increasing demand from private businesses like cars, washing machines, TVs, food, etc and once the private sector takes off those government workers can be phased out and switched to private jobs.

I don't understand how you can't think this all the way through.

Government hires people to dig ditches. People digging ditches buy washing machines. Washing machine company expands. Government lays off ditch diggers, expects them to get a job at the washing machine factory. Can't you see the problem? These places are only expanding due to the increased demand from the ditch diggers. Once the ditch diggers are laid off, the demand falls off, and those places contract.

I was going off with the example. A better example would be investing in infrastructure which is what the New Deal was and what the Jobs bill from Obama included. While the government pays for the work done, the work is actually performed by private companies that receive contracts from the government (preferable contracts that they can bid on, not that no-bid process going on with majority of DOD contracts).

Now, not only are you putting people to work that will drive demand for everything in the economy but you're also re-building the infrastructure that is in dire need of upgrades that will benefit a lot of private businesses as well.

Not only that but if people have money maybe they'll start buying homes again (prices have started to go up - I know as I'm in the house buying process right now). Government spending could also be used to demolish neighborhoods of abandoned houses or condemned houses that exist in many of our cities and have the land be re-developed by private companies or taken over by cities and have them do with the land what they wish - sell it to raise revenue, establish public parks that increase the quality of life etc.

Bottom line is that private businesses will not invest in their business additional money (no matter how many tax cuts you give them) if they do not see an increase in demand. The job of the government in times like these (recession or slow recovery) is to increase that demand for the good of the country and the good of the economy.

I have not seen any plan from the GOP that is directed AT increasing demand. All they have provided is tax cuts which does not do that directly and evidence has shown that tax cuts do not create the same type of return on the dollar as government hiring individuals directly or through government contracts to private businessed.

And that's fine! People hadn't been retiring, which was hurting employment opportunities for young people. If the old people feel confident about their retirement, I say good. Get them out of there and get the younger crowd employed stat!

Y'all make it sound like older people are leaving voluntarily instead of being pushed out.Couple it with very real job discrimination, many people aren't retiring because they want to, they're retiring because they have to/the choice is being made for them.

hugram:nmrsnr: hugram: adiabat: Good news is the U-6 ( Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force - the REAL number.) is 14.7%From 2002-2008 the worst it ever got was 13.5%.

those numbers are nice, but what would be even more valuable was if you could post the rate of change in the unemployment in the month when they took office vs. the rate of change at the end. Because just from the numbers you posted it could be that Obama just had slow unemployment growth over 4 years instead of illustrating how it was skyrocketing in the beginning and is slowly lowering now.

I have posted this graph before as well on other threads...

[i2.cdn.turner.com image 620x355]

Actually you should be fairer and at least start the numbers in February. Remember Jan 20th is when he was inaugurated. So not much he could do about January.

yes, it sucks. But I'm viewing things from the vantage point of this decade being an economic disaster, quite literally leveling the economic structure that existed before.

Those middle-wage jobs are 'gone'. They're not coming back. The middle class was gutted by this economic collapse and we're having to start over from scratch and we lack a World War to spur employment upward.

We're at ground zero and low-wage service jobs are the first step in rebuilding the middle class structure. No, it won't happen quick, nor easy. You can blame the GOP and the super-rich for that.

Some retired, some went back to school. And given how many people will be retiring as the baby boomer hit retirement age, it's going to take finding a slightly different number to really measure things. There are roughly 10,000 people turning 65 each day now. And 64, 63, 62, 61 and 60. That's a metric assload of people who are reaching retirement and many will indeed be retiring. Now how many retired last month? Can't find the number, but it's not going to be an insignificant number.

It's shocking that no one in the media bothers to posit the "Not enough swinging qualified dicks to cover the number of retirees leaving the workforce mixed with companies not backfilling those positions to save a buck" theory. I am sure Freakonomics will look at this in a few years and say most of the stagnation in decreasing the unemployment rate was 1) Boomers leaving the workforce and 2) companies saving money and not creating jobs so that R-money can come in and give them sweeping tax cuts.

WhyteRaven74:There's the problem, projections do not necessarily predict future numbers very well. Sure the prediction may look solid, but things may happen that make it utterly impossible for the predicted outcome to result.

which makes a shortfall disappointing and a result in excess of projections of nice surprise. If the economy is projected to grow 2% per quarter but only grows at .5% per quarter, we call that disappointing. We don't just throw our hands up and say "lol projecting is hard!"

It's so funny. "He's not making it better but it's not fast enough! Let's go ahead and elect some Republicans. I'm sure they know how to fix what they broke!"

Cameron, dude, what looks good on paper doesn't help put food on the table in reality. 99 weekers and the underemployed are NOT going to be impressed by spin, man. Spin won't pay the rent. Paper stats won't keep the lights on this month. That's all.

DamnYankees:MattStafford: DamnYankees: We can either borrow, tax or print. Given our current interest rates, I think borrowing makes the most sense.

Out of curiousity, suppose there was a drunk who spent all of his money on wine and women, building bigger houses and taking extravagant trips. The bank was funding all of this at an extremely low rate. Would you think it fiscally prudent for him to double down on this just because of the low rates?

Prudent for him, personally? But its better for the economy if he were to do that than if the bank just sat on that money and did nothing.

But this is not a good analogy, since the increased spending does not, in any way, increase the drunk's ability to earn income in the future. The government creating economic activity does increase its ability to take in revenue in the future.

Banks and lenders don't just sit on money. That's the part you're missing. The money used by the bank/investor to fund the drunk/Keynesian borrowing would otherwise have been used somewhere else.

To fund the governments Keynesian borrowing, which other asset class should investors/lenders reduce their investment in?

Mortgage lending? Should banks lend less to homeowners, further hurting prices?

skullkrusher:Headso: skullkrusher: CPennypacker: Some people don't realize that adisappointing jobs report doesnt necessarily mean Romney could do better (or good at all)

also, some people don't realize that honestly looking at a jobs report and saying "this is disappointing" is not a criticism of Obama nor an endorsement of Romney. It is an objective analysis of results vs expectations.

Those people must not realize we are 2 months from an election.

leave the spin to those running for office. You should be able to pull off objective analysis this close to an election.

the real possibility the election could bring us back to those good old days makes it part of the object

You have to admit, given the characterization of that analogy and the real-world parallels that surround it, the irony is astounding.

I have hope that he is full of that special excitement one has when they start a semester full of classes that are in or relate to their major. Then when he starts his senior year, he can look back and quietly shake his head and realize there is still so much to learn.

Hobodeluxe:starsrift: LucklessWonder: Politics has gotten so divisive. Let me post something that will help the healing of this country, whether you are Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Fascist or Communist. Behold, the healing power of.... [www.989thedrive.com image 500x569]

Duke Phillips' Singing Bears:skullkrusher: I suppose you would argue that the fact that they earned any money at all makes it not disappointing - this is, of course, ridiculous.

I disagree that this is a ridiculous argument. I think that earning any profit at all is a good thing. I think that we generally have unrealistic expectations about the state of the world, and I think that given the global economy is currently in a state where it is finding its equilibrium (as the fella that wrote Snow Crash said "The invisible hand of the free market smooths everything out to the level a pakistani brick layer would call prosperity) any growth at all is a good thing. But I have lowered expectations. 30 years of watching Pax Americana collapse like a flan in a cupboard will do that.

you're expecting a 10% raise but you get a 2% raise, is that disappointing or is it just one of those things where you had unrealistic expectations about the state of the world?

Your post is bad and you should feel bad. I point this single item out because yes, yes he did say that. It was referred to as the popping of the dot com bubble. And he sent not one, but two stimulus tax cut bills to the Congress because of it.

Headso:skullkrusher: Headso: skullkrusher: CPennypacker: Some people don't realize that adisappointing jobs report doesnt necessarily mean Romney could do better (or good at all)

also, some people don't realize that honestly looking at a jobs report and saying "this is disappointing" is not a criticism of Obama nor an endorsement of Romney. It is an objective analysis of results vs expectations.

Those people must not realize we are 2 months from an election.

leave the spin to those running for office. You should be able to pull off objective analysis this close to an election.

the real possibility the election could bring us back to those good old days makes it part of the object

so you want dishonest analysis of data in light of that? Who am I kidding, of course you do.

skullkrusher:We don't just throw our hands up and say "lol projecting is hard!"

Actually, you just look at projections as academic exercises and instead focus on actual real numbers. Whether or not in any given month projections match reality is nice for compiling statistics, but judging reality based upon what someone thought might happen is not really a good way to go.

skullkrusher:you're expecting a 10% raise but you get a 2% raise, is that disappointing or is it just one of those things where you had unrealistic expectations about the state of the world?

/I can't believe this conversation is actually happening

It is disappointing if I desired the 10% raise. Which I must have been doing if you said I expected it. If a 2% raise is the state of the world, then I would be foolish to desire anything else. It is my desire that caused my suffering.

Debeo Summa Credo:Banks and lenders don't just sit on money. That's the part you're missing. The money used by the bank/investor to fund the drunk/Keynesian borrowing would otherwise have been used somewhere else.

Yeah, it's being used to buy treasury bonds - that's the point. This argument makes no sense in the context of low interest rates. If people with money were actually willing to invest their funds in private enterprise, why the hell would they be buying treasury bonds with negative real yields? But they are, for whatever reason. And while they are willing to do it, we should take advantage.